What are Notices and when do I use them?

Guarantee your users never miss important news!

Written by Travis Clifford Updated over a week ago

When running a Customer Validation program, you’re bound to run into an occasion where you’ll want your users to fill out essential profiling forms or be presented with important messaging. The question is, how can you ensure your users see or complete these mandatory items? The Centercode platform allows you to mark various resources as mandatory for your team(s) called Notices. When a particular resource is marked as a Notice, it will force users to complete/view the selected resource before moving forward.

What are Notices?

A Notice is a setting in each resource type that can be toggled on or off for the team(s) of your choice via the Team Access block. When the Notice box is checked on, the team(s) selected will be presented with the resource you’ve configured. Where these Notices populate will depend on which layer of the Centercode platform they’re configured.

Community Notices will populate directly after the user logs in and before the user reaches your Community Homepage.

Project Notices will populate after navigating into each Project and before the user reaches your Project Homepage.

Once a Notice has been seen or completed by a user, that Notice will no longer populate for them. However, you can set a Notice to be Recurring, which causes the Notice to repopulate every time your designated team(s) log in.

There are three main types of Notices you can configure within Centercode:

Form Notices revolve around User Profiles, Test Platforms, and Surveys. These types of Notices require users to fill out the presented form/questionnaire before proceeding.

Content Notices are used for presenting information such as participation guidelines or release information. These can be designed to have an interactive aspect, such as requiring a digital signature to proceed, but are typically non-interactive.

Notice Macros execute a designated action upon your users, such as adjusting their team, either statically or conditionally. The assigned action will take place when the user has navigated through the Notice.

Once you have decided which resources you would like to appear as Notices for which team(s), it’s time to configure the order in which they’ll appear. We call the order in which your users navigate through these mandatory resources the Notice Chain. To adjust your Notice Chain, click Community Tools or Project Tools, then on Notices. From here, you’ll be able to drag and drop your Notices into the desired order. You’ll also be able to preview the Notice process for your team(s) to see how their navigation path will flow. Additionally, Notice Management is where you’ll create Notice Macros, a powerful automation tool.

What are Notices used for?

Presenting Users with Important Information

Have some breaking news you need to present to your testers? Maybe you’d like them to sign an NDA before fully accepting them as participants into your Project? Within the Content tool, you have the option to set up the following types of Notices:

Agreement - This Notice type requires the user to enter their username/password to digitally Agree to the details included in the Content presented.

Block - This Notice type halts the user’s progression into the Community or Project level.

Click Through - This Notice type can be passed by simply clicking on a button at the bottom of the form, and is typically used to relay important information.

Password - This Notice type requires the user to enter a custom password in order to continue into the Community or Project.

Yes/No - This Notice type will prompt users with information followed by a Yes or No button, that can be used in conjunction with a Notice Macro to do varying actions to the user based on which response they select.

HTTP Post - This Notice type is used for integration to other systems, and is sometimes set up to interface with outside items such as an external NDA form, or other external systems.

Gathering Mandatory Information

Requiring users to fill out profiling information when they join your portal is vital to running a successful Customers Validation program. Having this information will allow you to segment your users demographically and technically, leading to easier recruiting, better reporting, and better insight into your product. Any form type (User Profile/Test Platform/Surveys) can be set as a Notice by checking the Notice box in the Team Access block. Unlike Content Notices, Form Notices only have one type of Notice setting - once selected, users will be required to complete the form to continue.

Segmenting your users can make your Customer Validation program easier to manage. However, manually segmenting users can take time. Luckily, you can configure a Notice Macro to do the heavy lifting for you. A Notice Macro utilizes User Macros. A macro is a single instruction that expands automatically into a set of instructions to perform a particular task. A Notice Macro will perform its action when users are confronted by the page containing the Notice Macro within the Notice Chain.

Finishing Up

Notices are a powerful tool within Centercode that can be utilized to significantly reduce administrative overhead, ensure your users are presented with vital information, guarantee users fill out essential questionnaires, and more. If you run into any issues while configuring your Notices, please let us know! We’d be happy to guide you through this process and address any other questions you may have. Feel free to reach out to us via in-site chat or help@centercode.com.

Notes:

I'm assuming a user. Why can't I see their Notices?

When assuming a User in your portal, you will skip the entire Notice Chain at both the Community and Project layer of the portal. This is designed to allow you to verify configuration beyond the Notice Chain and avoid impacting the user’s navigation path while assuming their account.

Notice Macros will run “behind the scenes” when users encounter them on the Notice Chain meaning they will not be aware any action is being taken on their account.

When selecting the Notice Type within the Notice Management tool, available types are based upon areas that exist at that level of the site (i.e. Content Notices would not be available unless a Content Type exists within Content Management).

If you’re noticing that certain users are logging into your Community or Project, but not completing notices, it’s implied that the user simply has left the page without choosing to continue forward. The Notice will still appear when the user attempts to access your Community or Project again.

Notice Macros are part of the Notice Chain. Notice Macros will perform its action in the order that the Notice Macros are placed. Please see your Notice Management tool to re-order your Notices. For example, you'll want your Block Notice to occur after your Qualification Survey. That way, your survey will be available to be taken by your users, but then need to be blocked in order for their responses to be analysed. Having the Block occur before the survey would result in those users to not have access to your survey.